Because Area 51 encourages off-topic questions, and users receive rep when their questions are voted off-topic, have we created a haven for trolls? A user could post countless absurd questions throughout the site and rapidly rise to 10K status. Are these the people we want to trust with semi-mod powers?

(I am not posting specific examples because I don't want to a) feed the trolls, and b) single anyone out)

More thoughts:

A good off-topic question is one that is almost on topic. These are useful, and posting them and voting on them should be encouraged. There are lots of bad questions that are obviously off-topic. It's very easy to write bad questions, and they are easily identified. I am concerned that lots of overtly bad questions will be posted, and these will get lots of votes. I don't think this is helpful, and has the side effect of elevating the users who post them.

voting will change today, you will have the Meh vote for trollish questions, or you can not vote on them at all, the best medicine for troll fever is to ignore it
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juanformosoJun 4 '10 at 13:19

2

This is a non-problem; you can vote a question for deletion. It's a hypothetical problem, too; while I have seen numerous spam proposals, I have seen very few overtly bad questions.
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Robert HarveyJun 4 '10 at 15:30

7 Answers
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Off-topic question submissions are important to determine the boundaries of the proposed site. You don't know what you are unless you know what you aren't. I actually find it a lot harder to think of good off-topic questions than good on-topic questions.

If the questions are literally trolls - as in, they have nothing to do with the site, as opposed to just tip-toeing on the boundary - then they shouldn't be voted off-topic, they should be deleted. If people are giving them off-topic votes instead, then there needs to be some better education with respect to how votes should be issued.

I'm only following 3 proposals right now, but I really haven't seen that many troll questions. Actually, I don't think I've seen any. So I don't think it's really that big a problem, at least not on all proposals.

A good troll isn't immediately recognizable as a troll. That's how they draw people in, get them to respond, sate that need for attention.

...And, IMHO, these are the sorts of questions you want to identify early on. Because they won't be dealt with effectively by the community after the site goes live - enough people will take them seriously to keep them open, or at least make them into centers of controversy. See "Boat programming", "Tabs vs. Spaces", "Why has [human society] [produced some outcome]?", etc. in the context of SO... These are not as easy to pull off - and I'm never quite sure if the individuals posting them are intentionally trolling or merely unable to grasp the purpose of the site. They're like Edward Norton's character in "The Score"...

So no, I don't think A51 is a "haven for trolls". Effective trolling is hard. It's the blatantly bad questions that are, as you note, easy to write and easy to vote on. But the voting system is changing anyway, so who knows what this'll end up looking like...

With the interface changes and changes to the voting system, posting silly or trivial questions will gain you little-to-no reputation. I'll post more about the changes as soon as we work out some of the details.

I agree with this question. There seem to be a handful of people (<= 10) who seem to be dedicated trolls either proposing preposterous Q&As or questions or voting down questions without any clear explanation.